Seriously, Exercise Doesn’t Lead to Weight Loss

I’m on vacation, and writing this on my phone, so this will be short (and contain no pics or links).

I just heard a BBC report about a study saying that children who are overweight are less likely to exercise, but children who don’t exercise are NOT more likely to become overweight.

In short, we burn about 3/4ths of our calories just staying alive. The difference between an active kid and a less active kid just isn’t enough to register on the chart.

For one thing, more active kids may eat more, replacing the few extra calories that they burned.

I posted before that I don’t think that exercise is the on the path to weight loss for adults, and this study sure doesn’t shake my opinion.

I’ll mention, as I did in my post about adults, that this doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t worry about exercising. Exercise is hugely important for all kinds of health reasons. But weight loss doesn’t seem to be one of them.